2009 Pension CETV / tracing pension

[ALBA MELV]

Good evening finance gurus and powerfully built company directors!

The wife is soon to be the ex-wife, thankfully. Part of the finance settlement is that she's getting 50% of my pensions from the duration of the marriage via pension share.

I'm struggling with getting a CETV from the date of marriage (2009) as the pension provider from my former place of work has changed at least 3 times from joining them to now. I've contacted them via email and tried to speak to a human in their pensions dept but have had no luck so far, but I'll persist.

Start of employment - 2004
Date of Marriage - 2009
Date of separation - 2021
I don't know when I started paying into a pension with this employer

Current provider - Scottish Widows (SW) - These guys have given me the CETV from date of separation, all good there
Prior to SW it was Zurich from April 2011 up to 2017
Prior to Zurich it was AXA from ? up to April 2011

Axa workplace pensions seem to no longer be in existence. Would whoever bought them have my details and would they be obliged to answer my requests for a CETV from the date of marriage?

Is there a simpler way to know who a pension was with back then using my NI number?

I'm essentially looking for reassurance that trying to follow the trail backwards and also going to my previous employer is the right course of action to get the info I need.

Thanks.

[Countdown]

My understanding was that your current provider should be able to calculate how much CETV you accrued between 2009 and 2021. When they took over the administration all your historical information should have transferred over to them.

[d50cyx]

Scottish Widows/Lloyds is the same platform as Zurich Corporate, so no change there. And I'm reasonably sure all historic transaction data was migrated onto Zurich Corporate. So (in theory at least) SW should be able to tell you the first answer as well.

[Zigster]

I'm reading between the lines and filling in some gaps so apologies if I've got the wrong end of the stick but ...

It sounds, from the providers you list, as if you have some sort of group personal pension arrangements. If your previous employer changed provider while you were still employed by them, you are quite likely to have been given the opportunity to transfer funds with, say, AXA to Zurich and then subsequently from Zurich to SW. So there might not be any funds remaining with AXA or Zurich as all your pension savings from that employment are consolidated with SW.

If you do have policies with a provider, you would be getting regular statements from them showing the policy number, the fund value, and recent transactions (such as contributions and withdrawals. If you aren't getting anything like that, it might be that you are asking about funds which no longer exist.

Assuming they are all defined contribution type arrangements and they still exist it should be pretty straightforward to get the valuations you require - the providers will get these sorts of requests every day. You've used the acronym CETV but that tends to be used for defined benefit schemes (i.e. it's the Cash Equivalent Transfer Value of the defined benefit) whereas it would normally be just TV or Fund Value or something like that if it's a more typical defined contribution personal pension scheme.

Is your divorce lawyer able to help you with this?

[ALBA MELV]

Thanks all!

Yes, group company pension.

I've finally managed to speak to a human at my previous employer. Their receptionist was previously insistent on being unable to transfer my call and gave me an email address, an email address that turns out to only accept internal emails! Christ on a bike!

Anyway. Found out that the pension was with AXA, formerly friends life, now Aviva. As it's a closed policy with them they have to put in a request with their IT team to supply me the CETV from date of marriage.